I do my bit for Visit Malaysia 2007

And here we have the Petronas Twin Towers (the worlds tallest twin towers since those really shoddy horrible looking ones over in the US fell down in that dramatic, but hilarious manner a few years back). You can see these from anywhere in KL - depending on the level of haze prevailing that is.
They're big and shiny. Like two very big shiny man made things.
How could I have waited so long to post a picture of Petronas on my blog? (I hear you ask) well because every bugger that ever comes here takes pictures of this place, and since I go past it every day and can basically see it from absolutely everywhere it kind of becomes a bit bland dunnit. Oooh, wow, big building, shiney.
Nicely lit at night though, all credit to them for that.
You can get a free ticket up to the skybridge between the two, which is quite fun but you don't get to stay more than 10 minutes because it's reet busy.
That seems pretty decent to me, the chief symbol of this new city, the chief tourist attraction here and you can go in for free. Petronas also have quite a decent art gallery inside the shopping centre under the towers, that's free too and often has some pretty good stuff in there.
The things you can do with petrochemical cash eh.
And who said having wars for oil wasn't worth the effort?





Next we have Petalling Street, the main shopping drag in chinatown, where all the tourists go shopping. You can get some bargains if you're ready and willing to get some haggling going, and the smells are pretty, well, erm, pretty smelly. Lots of nice food, tropical fruits, clothes, DVDs, sunglasses, bags, food, shoes, trinkets, tourist tat, music, hats , booze and any number of other things. The area is called Pasar Seni (meaning Art Market, Pasar being a bit of an altered version of the arabic Bazzar I rekon).
You get to see lots and lots of authentic white backpackers being ripped off, which is quite fun. See on the bottom right, there's one, ready for a ripping.....

Then around the corner from Petalling Street you have the Sri something-or-other temple, which is lovely. One thing about those Hindu fellas, they have got some top quality gods. This whole temple is full of really nice colourful statues of dieties, minor and major. They sure know how to make nice temples these chaps. I really enjoy it here, and it looks very good on camera. This is a shot of the entrance, this tower thingy is about 10 meters or so high, maybe a bit more, I've never measured it like.













This old boy has a roadside sugar cane juice stall. He's proper good. For just 1 Rinngit - 15p or something- you get a glass of fresh squeezed sugar cane juice. He's got this shaving thing which he uses to shred the big blocks of ice by hand. He's a lovely chap and his juice is nace. Sugar cane is just about the best thing on a hot day when you're feeling utterly dead, tired and drained because it just pumps raw sugar straight into the bloodstream whilst at the same time being cool, refreshing and thirst quenching. Handy if any diabetics are nearby and go hypo. It's not that sweet either, because it's unprocessed, just sweet enough.
You can just about see the silver cane mangle (behind the bundle of cane tied together in the middle) which you push a section of cane through. The juice just oozes out and rolls down the side into the collection tray.
Yum. Oh he sells coconut milk too, but it just ain't a patch on the sugar cane lah.


And these people are in Central Market (a new place where tourists can buy the same tat at higher prices because it's indoors and has Air Con). They sell really nice cakes, cookies and stuff.










Meat!!!! One great thing about chinatown is that you can buy the flesh of the swine here. Raw or cooked these chaps will flog you a huge chunk of dead sow here no bother. In most supermarkets the Non-halal is stuck away in a tiny corner with the booze and rat poison, muslim Malay people at the checkout won't even touch a packet of ham with their bare hands (often non-halal is dealt with by a chinese or indian member of staff, or several carrier bags wrapped round the hand).
At stalls like this in Petalling street you can hold you hold your head up high and say "I'd like a kilo of your finest spicy sausages please!! The ones made out of pig!!!" and nobody will look at you like a leperous scummer.
I've met muslim guys here who freely admit to having the odd drink now and again, but find the concept of eating gammon absolutely vomit inducing. Fair enough. But bacon and egg sangwiches man, I do miss em, the bacon here is utterly rubbish.

Finally I get around to showing some pictures,

It occurred to me today that there aren't a great deal of pictures of KL on my blog.
So to give you all a general idea of the city and it' surroundings I've gone through mine and Vanessas pictures to find some of the more realistic jobbies.

My brain is a little bit too fried from staring at computer screens all week to go into great detail about recent events - well in fact the ajority of it has been being stuck in a little aircon edit suite fixing a TV movie to make it nice. A lot of brain bleeding fine tuning has been going on, and it's taken ages.

(On a side note, I can hear the newspaper recycling man coming down the street - he's got a little rubber horn on his truck that goes Hoh-hee-hoh-hee-hoh-heee and a looped tape, in a very jolly indian accent that goes "all paper, paper lama, old battrie, bettrie lama" hoh-hee-hoh-hee-hoh-hee.
It's a pretty disinctive sound of KL, these guys go all over town and collect recyclables I'll try and record him sometime and put the MP3 on here.)

So these top pictures are all taken around the Chinatown part of the centre, it's a nice mash up of old shop houses, some British colonial style stuff and lots of big new sleek towers. The big shame is that most of this area is very badly maintained, it's dirty with the scuzz of air pollution (from buses, cars and the haze that drifts over from Indonesia when they burn great tracts of rainforest to make pasture land for burger companies).
This is the primary area where tourists come and stay, it's full of dirty rotten guest houses with cockroaches and smells to make you gag - which makes backpackers feel like they are having a truely "authentic asian experience". Hmm, not quite necessary in KL which is basically a first world city where nice hotels don't cost very much at all. But that's how it goes with the Apex-supersaver round the world ticket and the gap year round the world traveller, in order to be origional and have your own special authentic travellers experience you have to do exactly what everybody else is doing. That's why people read the lonely planet, to make sure that they have an origional and fun time without ever having to think for themselves.
Anyway, rant over back to KL.

The ariel shot is taken from the top of the KL tower (which is you typical tall tower constructed for tourists and phone companies) which looks like a big pinapple on a stick. It comes with obligatory revolving restaurant on top.
At night it looks like a big pinapple covered in fairy lights.

You can actually have a short elephant ride at the bottom of the tower, which is a bit odd cos I don't rekon malaysia has any elephants, but there you have it.


On the mid/top right you can see a brown bulding with two big towers poking up - this is Berjaya Times Square (near to Bukit Bintang). It's an enormous shopping centre. I only mention it because it's got a theme park inside it too. You can go on one rollercoaster which cruises above all the shoppers walking 2 floors below you with all their purchases.







This is just some bird that got in the way of a nice photo.












How sweet and innocent Malaysia can seem sometimes. No kissing in the park.
Ahhhhh.
Isn't that quaint and just a little bit backwards.

It's a wonder how the populace perpetuates itself isn't it.

Well a girl is born with a special flower, and when she is married she gives that special flower to her husband.

(This sign could also be a warning to people with bad hair-dos from going out in public.

After taking this photo I gave Vanessa a peck on the cheek. Aren't I such a rebel
.

How Now Feng Tau

Good evening all, well I'm nursing abit of a hangover today after a very jolly evening on the lash with my lady. We started off in Bangsar (near her parents place) in the area that a few years ago was the bar and club centre of KL, full of expats and lots of booze filled activity. Nowadays the bars are all still there, but the polpulous has all moved away to other newer and more spangly bars in KLCC and other areas. We went into a really nice and chilled moroccan soak style affair, with hookah pipes, sheesha tobacco, moody lighting and cushions all over the place. Really nice, you sit on these elevated platforms with tyour shoes off and lay back into the comfy soft furnishings. I presume this style was developed in the morroccan hash and opium dens, so you could get totally mshed and then just cabbage out on the floor with comfy pillows to support you. Here sadly, that just ain't the case so I had to make do with a fe pints of Tiger.
We were treated to a lovely comedy scene in there (it was actually a bit like watching a scetch show on TV) because opposite us were a hilarious group of 15 year old, pre GCSE english kids who study in one of the international schools here - their parents will be rvery rich diplomats etc. They all discovered that this place will serve them booze, no questions asked apparently, and are going through that beauiful phase of getting really drunk on 3 pints in a friendly bar for the first time. They were reet funny. Typical underage drinking, but on a bunch of posh kids, the came over and chatted (well, shoutingly stumbled about) to me for a bit. Bizarrely one of the lads was from Heanor, or he was born there at least - which was just a tad obscure.
They provided us with a vast amount of hilarity for over half an hour.

After that we got in a taxia nd went to my frst ever Feng Tau night, in an amazingly neon psychadelic club in Sri Hartamas (a few iles down the road). Feng Tau means "shake head" in mandarin (or cantonese perhaps, or even hokkien maybe) and the idea of the place is that lots of chinese people take illegal things and then shake their heads on the dancefloor. It was pretty fun to watch. Also other guys dnacing the Melbourne Shuffle (which nobody in melbourne ever does apparently) which is a bit like jogging on the spot with the occasional side step.
The music was hard house, and I think on saturday it gets even harder.
We had a great night watching people and getting rather drunk on expensive booze.
This feng tau club had the most amazing amount of neon lighting, more than I've ever seen before. All the tables were neon, the whole exterior was neon strips.
I didn't take me camera this time, but I'm going to go back and you can all see what a well lit asian club can look like innit.

Tonight my first TV movie is being shown - in about 5 minutes actually. So I'm going to watch it, along with Vans family, and listen to my hilariously bad John Motson impression one more time.

Love to all.

My time is running short in Malaysia

I've been getting emails from the Wexford guys this week, which means that the system is all getting fired up - and by the rates of pay those guys command it can only mean one thing. I'm coming home soon.
This past week or more has been a bit all over the place really, lots of going back and forth to work, we've been on a location recce for the next film, I bought a lovely shiny laptop (ooooh), operated the camera for a whole day of auditions for the new cast of this next film, got a part in the film, lost the part in the film the next day because of a script re-write, got offered the job of editor for the next film but had to turn it down because I'm coming home so soon (waaaaahhh, such a nightmare that one, my dreams come true but I've had to put it on hold cos of past commitments - and the eternal quest for money), went out for a really nice meal on Saturday night with the Chia family and friends, organised a party, cancelled the party, started to remaster the audio on a previous TV movie because it was rubbish, played computer games and took a trip one night to Putra Jaya (one of the worlds most pointless cities, utterly devoid of any soul whatsover - second only in functionality and "asthetics", in my experience to Milton Keynes).
So as ever life is pretty hectic, and yet I've managed to squeeze in a few beers and a couple of hours of laying down in my hammock with cups of tea.

All this and still breathing.

As for this next movie (TV movie at least) it's called Jalan Berangan, which translates as Dream Street/Road. It's going to be filmed in residential streets in the heart of KL, around a mad chinese area directly in the shadow of loads of skyscrapers and all the newest developments is a fairly dirty looking spot with lots of clothes hanging out in gardens and on balconies (with stripy ornings). It should be a great job to work on. It's all about a Malay guy who gets all depressed and generally has a very gloomy time of things and various other bits and bobs involving colourful characters and scenarios. It's not going to be a big cheesy slapstick fiasco like the last one, it looks like it might even have a degree of content and delivery. Marvellous.
I'm not entirely sure, not confirmed yet, but I might be the sound recordist on set - mainly due to the fact that I've been cursing the poor quality of audio on the last 2 films they've done and now they're going to make me eat my words and make it better. Well I suppose it's the classic adage - if you want summert doin proper, do it the sen.

As far as career moves go I think coming to KL is one of the best ideas I've ever had. Here I've got a million possibilities, I can move around and act as a consultant (both technical and artistic) to the growing visual arts industry here. I have the chance to actually contribute properly to a broadcast company and my ideas are listened to because I've often got the right solutions. In a few years time I'll be writing and directing my own productions here, wheras at home I'd be spending an eternity as a lackey to an established machine of tedium. I've already started writing a screen play for a comedy idea we've hit upon and if it's good enough then there is every possibility it will get funded and filmed.
OK so the censorship here is pretty high, but I can work around that I'm sure.

Enough ramblings, I've got a bit of a headache but I just thought I'd pour some of this out - it is a blog after all.
I'll post some more photos soon, so you don't all get tired of this endless text.

ps: anyone wants to email me its
tim_doughty@hotmail.com

hint.

Putra Jaya - what a pointless place

Last night was a very jolly night indeed. We went for the usual Chia family saturday night meal, a tradition of theirs, but this was a bit special cos they had some family visitors popping by from Ausralia for the week. We went to a proper nice chinese restaurant called the Imbi Palace, where we ate loads of prawns, crispy duck, pigeon, noodles and all sorts of tasty yummyness. The pigeon was particularly delicious, not as nice as the duck of course, but certainly much tastier than chicken.
After food we went over to the aquarium tanks where the fresh fish is kept, and we watched some adventurous crabs climb over the sides of the tanks and try to escape, which was quite fun indeed. One was really tenacious and kept climbing over the partition between 2 tanks - I get the feeling he thought he was making a dramatic getaway but he failed to notice that whenever he got into a new tank he was escaping over the same wall hed just arrived by. Well, nobody ever said crabs were notorious for their intellect did they.

After dinner Jess (Vans older sister) and her boyfriend Julian suggested a late drive to Putra Jaya to take some night photos with tripods. We got in the car and made the 45 minute drive down the highway to the brand new city, which did not evolve at al, it was merely planed and constructed by the government. In the manner of Milton Keynes. Needless to say it has about the same amount of charm and prescence as Englands car park.

Never go to Putra Jaya, unless you want to experience how Asian town planners can make a real arse of building a new city just as well as we can in the UK. It's the most abundantly soulless place imaginable. Admittedly it looks a bit better than Milton Keynes, but not much.
Putra Jaya is such a pitiful place it really is quite sad. I'm sure i tlooked good when the models were made and put into the parliamentary planning office. I'm certain all those little models of highways and shiny office blocks made the city planners feel all important and sexy.
Why is it that people who are in charge of building cirie are invarioubly the most unsuitable people for building a city?

Do they really think that a city is supposed to be designed around a road system? Really? Do they really love tarmac that much that the need to make it the absolute centerpoint for all human activity? Do they think " I know, what we'll do is build roads, absolutely masses of them, and then people willbe begging to move here".
Utterly insane.

On Putra Jayas list of "things to do" the number one favoured activity is Leave.

I've just been on the PutraJaya tourism website and this i swhat they have to offer - 9 Bridges, the ministry of Finance, a lake, government buildings and a fountain. It also has one of the worlds largest and most preposterous roundabouts as you come in from KL.

All in all it's a total joke.

Oh and don't try and got there after midnight because the whole place is closed. They won't even let you walk across Indepence square at night (and the whole place is wide open and clearly a public thoughroughfare) presumably because couples might wish to enjoy a romantic stroll of an evening, and maybe do something wild and unacceptable like holding hands. We tried to walk accross, but lots of (no doubt very bored) guards started blowing whistles at us.

The only place we found that was open was a 7-11.
I men, I ask you, at midnight on a saturday in a city only 40 minutes from KL.
Why do they bother????

Oh Putrajaya does have awetlands park, for conservation purposes - however when you consider that 10 years ago they slashed and burned 11000 hectares of forest and jungle to make Asias Milton Keynes, getting a few chaffinches to roost in a damp bush is hardly a great step forward now is it.

If any potential tourists are reading this site, take my advice and don't go to Putrajaya.
Even the totalitarian delights in Singapore are more fun than here.

House sitter required

I've got my tickets booked to come back to the wet and windy isles just off the north-western coast of mainland europe, I'll be back in the rheumatism inducing weather in less than a month now. Oh you lucky lucky devils. I'll only be around for a few days, cos then I'm straight off to wexford for a bit of hard labour so if you want to meet up then email me and we'll have to organise in advance. I know that sounds ridiculously pompous, but the way I've booked the flights doesn't leave more than a few days each side of my arriving and leaving.
On the Malaysian side of things, when I come back home I'll be leaving the flat essentially un-attended, so if somebody fancies a few months of holiday looking after the place while I'm gone then let me know as it would be better to have someone there than not, right. What a marvellous offer I hear you cry, how cold we possibly refuse.
So answers on a postcard right - or an email wold suffice - but get your bums into gear and let me know, then book your flights (or book the flights first and then let me know, either way it's the same outcome). Obviously you won't have to be in the flat 24 - 7, you can go all over the place and investigate the country - and the ones next door for that matter, but it would mean somebody would be going back there at least every couple of weeks and therefore preventing squatters and cockroaches from invading right, also you could check my mail and pay the meagre water/electric bills (currently piling up at a whopping 5 quid a month combined).

You know the funny thing is, I know that nobody will actually come and take me up on this offer, because something tawdry, everyday and normal will get in the way - like having to wash your hair or a dentist appointment. Go on, take a chance and in the process you'll be helping me out.

Just think, free house, swimming pool, malaysia, sunshine, getting the squits, beautiful girls, very affordable asian cuisine, eating out in a different place every day, getting fat, lying in the hammock on the balcony, amazing tropical white sand beaches just a few hours a day away, being utterly confused most of the time, cheap shopping. And you won't even have to see me!
How often do you get an offer like this????

I'll be able to count the number of responses to this offer on less than one finger, i just know it.

surprise me

Sound Editing for fun

A most gruelling week indeed it has been, sitting in front of a Mac with me headphones on trying to make a vaguely decent sound design out of the somewhat dodgy source material I am provided with . There's an awful lot of background chatting from the crew which has been an utter pain to get rid of and a million other things. Well actually I don't want to bore you with the fine details, but it's been a hell of a lot of work and it still ain't over. They say you can't polish a turd, but I'm certainly giving it a go, it should have a least a dull sheen by the time I've finished (and then obviously I'll have to go and wash my hands).

I've been recording my football commentary voice over as well this weekend, doing a very shoddy impersonation of John Motson - which the guys at work seem to think is really convincing. Hurrah, it's a good job that nobody english is EVER going to hear this cos it really is terrible, but to the Malaysian ears it will do just fine. Hurrah.

A LITTLE SIDE TALE: Picture the scene, it's Thursday night, I'm just ready to go to bed early, preparing myself for a hard day at work. The phone rings, it's Vanessa. Her parents had bought tickets to an expensive dinner, a magazine launch do in a colonial mansion on a hill, a very posh soiree for the KL elite. Tickets to this dinner are pretty costly (200RM, which is around 30quid - this may not seem so expensive at all, but consider my lunch normally costs 3.50RM, or 50p , and that's a good lunch, an expensive lunch would be 20RM and then you're talking a real nice splashing out job).
They can't go, so we're to go in their place. The only problem for me is the dress code.
It's a traditional, formal do and the dress code is "Batik".
Batik, for those who don't know, is the process of dying silk with the aid of wax to form the edges. Malaysian batik styles range from the gaudy to the excessively gaudy - basically silk Aloha shirts that cost a lot of cash for a nice one.

The only time available to go batik shopping was in my half hour around lunchtime (my breaks are self governed but I'm on a tight deadline) so off I charged with no clue whatsoever, in search of a shirt that looks like it's been washed with several types of curry. How the hell was I supposed to know what looks nice, when the choices were a big shocking swirl in blue, a big shocking splat in red or any other number of options.
Well needless to say, I chose one that I thought looked nice, in a get-your-sunglasses kind of way, paid then legged it back to work. I chose a sort of mustardy, yellow, orange shocking swirl affair.
Why oh why, whenI asked all these people for help and advice on buying a batik shirt, why did none of them tell me that Yellow is the colour for royalty. Why. I think this is just about the only rule for batik, so why did no-one tell me, and why did I happen to pick out the only sodding colour which may prove contraversial without any clue whatsoever.
Don't ask how many people told me that yellow is the royal colour last night (in that sort of tone of voice that people generally reserve for dribbling mongs in wheelchairs, or cold callers from Mumbai).

Oh well.

A SIDE NOTE ON A SIDE NOTE: After my excasperating shopping trip, I finished work early with a list as long as my leg still uncompleted. I had a fairly mad dash to get to Vanessas house on time for the meal. I leave work, walk round the block to the bus stop, cross over the pedestrian footbridge (in a bit of a rush, afraid the bus would drive off, no paying a great deal of attention to where I put my feet) and bam. I tread in a giant turd. This turd had not been laid there by a canine however, no siree, that would be just too lucky. Oh no, this monstrously smelly mound of solid effluvia was borne of man, a very filthy degenerate "human being" had seen fit to empty his colon directly in my path. Just sodding fantastic.
So I try and scrape it off, scuff around in grass, on grit and a variety of other methods of clearing out the impressively deep treads of my hiking boots. But I also have a very pressing time frame on which to get back to vanessas house. So I sit on the bus, I normally draw stares anyway, but this time there was no mistaking the big tall blonde guy who smells like he shat himself, especially if you're sat next to him on a crowded rush hour bus. The same thing then on the LRT (after I might add I lost precious minutes trying to wash it off discreetly by sticking my boot in the big pond directly behind the Petronas twin towers, and then again with a hose in the LRT station toilets). The lady next to me was very politely trying not to vomit.
All of these pailed into insignificance however when I got into the taxi from the station to vans house. Whilst the public transport was embarrassing, I could at least breathe and look as if it might be someone else who was so offensive as to smell like a toilet, but there was no fooling the taxi guy who nearly honked up there and then as soon as I closed the door. All the windows were opened and he nearly threw me out - as we were stuck in rush hour traffic jam - until I begged him and then gave him an extra 20RM just to let me stay in. Poor guy the car probably still reeks to high heaven.

So I got back with minutes to spare, then had to scrub my boots with bleach to get the stench off.
Sadly the hour or so of being suspended above the turd stench proved not so jolly for my jeans, cos they'd decided (very decently I thought) to absorb a good portion of the stench for themselves, so that I made vanessas bathroom reek, had to borrow trousers from her dad and shoes from her brother, scrub myself raw in the shower, rub tiger balm on my nostrils to remove the fetted lingering poo fragments lodged in there and then go off to a very posh dinner where the Minister for Arts and Culture would also be dining along with with creme of KL society.
Just fooking marvellous



Here's a handsome young fella, shame he just chucked up all over himself

you can take the boy away from home, but he'll still get exited about pies